Reflective Encounters

“Through its cyberpunk vision, People Person takes the concept of planned obsolescence, which forces us to constantly update our smartphones, and takes it to its most extreme endpoint. What immediately sticks out are the types of shots being deployed, which are less typical in animation than they are in live-action. Behind-the-head tracking shots and first-person POV are frequent, foregrounding the protagonist’s subjectivity. This is crucial to the film’s success as a story because there is almost no dialogue, and so by placing such an emphasis on the main character’s perspective, the film is able to develop their personality through visual language.

At times it looks like the film is rotoscoped, an uncanny effect which works tremendously well with the film’s premise of reality-shifting. The idea that the software in cybernetic implants dictates the reality we see means that the film can tease an ill-defined line between live-action and animation. These themes have been touched on before, most notably in Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. But in People Person that relationship to a live-action reality is threadbare, reflecting the protagonist’s own ever-loosening grip. This gives the film, in spite of its lush use of colour, a palpable horror that stabs at the viewer in its conclusion.”

— Cathy Brennan